I have revised basic combat rules (article)

[Bloodlust]

Part 1 of 3


Hello everyone!

I recently invented a very interesting new take on GURPS basic combat system, which I can’t wait to share with the community. It actually solves a lot of problems, which I have encountered during my games, so perhaps some of you may find it interesting to see how basic combat can be improved (at least I perceive the result to be actual improvement in my games and work). I have no idea if anyone ever came up with such homerules before, but even if they have, I’m still gonna post this article. Pardon my Engrish, I haven’t practiced writing in it for quite a while.

I’ve enjoyed GURPS for quite a while now, and besides actually playing, I’m also a beginner novel writer and use GURPS rules to randomize social interactions, combat and other stuff between characters in my novels. It’s more fun that way, rather than simply telling a story, where every event is hardwired into the narrative.

This article describes an alternative way to use GURPS combat system for a faster, more consistent and convenient play. Let’s go!


DRAWBACKS OF BASIC COMBAT SYSTEM, WHICH I OFTEN ENCOUNTERED IN MY GAMES

The basic combat system in GURPS is fairly simple. Characters go one after another in the following sequence: access the situation – declare an action – make necessary calculations – roll 3d6 – execute action. While being quite elementary, there are certain nuances, which I struggled to resolve during my games.

1 – PLAYING BASIC COMBAT SYSTEM IS SLOW.

GURPS is considered to be “rules heavy”, but it’s not the rules or the rolls, that slow action down the most. Instead it’s the sequence of the turn itself, which must be followed every time by every player on the table, as well as GM.

Imagine the party of 8 characters, fighting against 8 orcs (controlled by GM). Every player follows the standard turn sequence of access-declare-roll-execute. Every single one of them has to do this, and it’s unavoidable.

I have discovered that such method consumes the most time for accessing the situation. After every player or NPC acts, tactical situation changes, sometimes only a little bit, sometimes drastically. And every player who has to act next has to reconsider the situation again, regardless of what he was planning to do at the start of the turn or the battle. By the time player-8 gets to act, disposition on the table has changed seven times, so whatever plans for his turn he had, are now irrelevant and he has to access the situation yet again, and only then choose his move, and that literally eats up more time at the table, than actual dice rolls!

I’ve noticed that in larger groups players too often get distracted while waiting for their turn. They have to wait longer, and don’t even bother paying attention, knowing that there’s no point in that as situation on the table will be completely different by the time their turn comes up.

2 – EXCESSIVE SITUATIONAL AWARNESS AND MINIMAL ANXIETY

Players always know the exact situation on the table, perfectly aware whether successfully or not other characters acted. Combat gets too predictable when any player can tell himself “Aha! This guy has hit the orc with his spear, and now the orc is dead and I can do my thing!”

Not only such awarness has significant impact on the combat itself, but also reduces the thrill of the battle to a minimum. This gets to be a real killjoy, when only one of eight orcs is still alive, when your turn finally comes up.

And this is important! We’re rolling dices because they make the game unpredictable and thus exciting. The dangers of battle should make player’s hearts beat faster with adrenaline, when their much loved characters are threatened with an untimely demise. The more situational awareness players have, the less is the thrill, and the less is the excitement and fun! When this thrill is minimal or absent, playing RPG becomes little more than moving pieces on the board, mumbling over the calculator, rustling of the character sheets and rolling some dices…

3 – POOR CINEMATIC IMAGING AND UNREALISTIC GAMEPLAY

By this I mean that all player’s turns are made consecutively, and have this unrealistic “feel” of characters acting one after another, which makes it difficult sometimes for players to visualize the process. And a couple of times I literally had to explain to novice players that after all eight characters have acted only one second of combat have passed and not eight! Basic combat system does not convey this principle enough, because it is cursed with this “consecutive turn” felling, making the fight seem unrealistic. And this is rightfully so, because “consecutive turn” also has a huge impact on combat mechanics with actions happening literally one after another and not simultaneously at all – every player makes has moves based on the actions of other players, who acted before him.

HOW DO WE FIX THIS?

The idea just struck me one day, and it turned out to be incredibly simple and effective! I call it “the simultaneous turn method” – it’s the simple tweak for the basic system, which replaces all of described disadvantages with actual advantages! A real magic no doubt! This might require a little bit extra bookkeeping though. But hey! We’re playing GURPS! We aren’t afraid of a few extra lines of text, right?

The base mechanic of this “simultaneous turn method” divides the entire one second turn into two stages – declaring actions stage, and execution stage. Sometimes I add the third “fun” stage.

DECLARING ACTIONS STAGE

Here every player announces their intended actions for their characters, and GM does the same for NPCs.

Players announce their actions strictly in established turn order. That is a player, which character goes first, declares his character’s action first. This is the same as in basic combat system, so the principle of the combat system remains unchanged and won’t be broken – we’re only slightly changing how actions are executed, while leaving the core mechanics intact.

No calculations are done in this stage – they are irrelevant! Players place their bids blindly, not knowing whether or not their buddy’s actions will succeed or fail, and thus most of preliminary calculations will be useless. The GM should outright forbid using preliminary calculations! This will save a lot of time and effectively defeat the arch-enemy of every GM – the Calculator-man! Indeed, this is already a subtle advantage of this new method. I sometimes saw players get frustrated, when GM tries to limit the time an aspiring munchkin or minimaxer spends calculating which of several possible actions of his character have the best odds for success. This is no longer the case! In “simultaneous turn method” there can be too many variables to take into account, so most often preliminary calculations are pointless. In our 8 heroes vs 8 orcs example there would be sixteen variables, and no way to precisely calculate the outcome of the turn, only roughly predict it.

Aaaaand once the intended action is declared it cannot be reconsidered. GM writes them down in any way he pleases just to remember who does what and when. Yup, that’s the little extra bookkeeping I mentioned. It doesn’t have to be too detailed though – this is basically “player X does Y to player Z” in lines. I personally prefer writing in Word, where lines can be easily edited or copy pasted. And if GM has a good memory and he’s sure he won’t forget stuff, he can keep this in his head and don’t bother writing at all.

When all combatants declared their intents, the game proceeds to the stage number two – execution!

EXECUTION STAGE

This is where all the calculations and rolls start taking place. GM and the players pick up their rulebooks and character sheets, pick up calculator and start calculating target numbers and roll dices. Characters act one after another (similar to the basic system) according to their turn order, they move and change positions, attack and inflict damage. The declared action is always executed if possible. If for some reason the action is no longer viable, it is still taken as long as it logically possible. If, for example, you intended to shoot the target with the rifle, and the target was destroyed by a player whose action resolves first – you still make your shots and spend your ammo. If somehow you’re been made unable to act (for example you have suffered knockdown, or the said rifle was kicked out of your hands) before you intended action comes up for resolution, then your turn is wasted.

Once all intended actions have been resolved, the turn is concluded – one second of combat has passed and the bid begins for the next second.

“FUN” STAGE

This is optional stage created purely for cinematic purposes. To use this GM and the players shouldn’t touch the pieces on the board! They simply roll up every intended action in the execution stage. Once this is complete, GM looks over the result and starts moving pieces while narrating every action in the most dramatic tone appropriate – “After deflecting your sword with his shield the orc swings his own sword at thee! You tried to step back to avoid this lethal blow, yet this wasn’t fast enough – the tip of the orc’s sword still manages to tear through leather armor and leave a nasty cut across your chest!”

Trust me, inventing this entire method of play was worth this “fun” part – this is the best and most thrilling cinematic narrative you can have!

[Bloodlust]

Part 2 of 3

Several practice sessions have shown that new method of using combat system has several advantages.

1 – COMBAT BECOMES SIGNIFICANTLY FASTER

Now there is only one tactical situation to access and decide everyone’s actions, and all players can do this at the same time without a boring wait for their turns to come. Thus, a dozen players get to spend a dozen times less seconds for tactical recognition. And now they can decide their course of action together, have a short discussion and plan their entire move. Player-8 won’t have to wait for eight minutes for the opportunity – he has to start thinking now! This increases the group’s cohesion and every player’s involvement.

The turn now has a new sequence: all players think at the same time and negotiate their plan – all players declare actions – necessary rolls are rolled – all actions are executed as a short narrated scene.

2 – INCREASE IN UNPREDICTABILITY AND THRILL

Without preliminary calculations and with as many unknown variables as there are combatants there is no way of telling the outcome of the round. This increases suspense; thrill and immersion, making the players truly worry about their character’s fates. GM may increase this thrill even further if he won’t declare the NPC’s actions, that aren’t obvious for onlookers. That is actually what this method is all about: less meta-game knowledge – less time spent calculating stuff – and more thrill and immersion.

3 – IMPROVED VISUALIZATION MAKES IT EASIER FOR NOVICE PLAYERS

Yes, it does! All stuff being grouped into stages with subsequent narrating stage makes it much easier to comprehend what’s going on. And the “camera” now “switches on” to show a short coherent scene in the end of the round, not a dozen “frames” separated by a lot of extra time making decisions and rolls. The picture is clear and consistent, and a new player understands game mechanics much faster.



In addition to advantages above, simultaneous turn method also changes several basic GURPS game mechanics, as well as introduces some new elements.

1 – ACTIONS CANNOT BE RECONSIDERED

Even if the target is already destroyed, or it’s no longer tactically sound to perform the declared action – a character still does it. A player has made his bid for this second, and now must suffer consequences. There are exceptions from this rule, most notably Interruptions – something prevents the action from being executed. The ceiling collapsed and you now can’t make a declared move, you’re knocked down or killed, a weapon is kicked of your hands and you can’t make a declared attack, you have suffered injury with Shock and now Staggered (see below for this new important mechanic), etc. The AI we asked for suggestions on improvements for this method, suggested that attackers be allowed to cancel the attack if the target’s already destroyed.

Either way, if the action is cancelled, whether voluntarily or not, the turn is wasted. We’re taking one second here, and if what you intended to do with this second cannot be done, or you decided not to do it, there is no more time left to do something else. Wait for the next turn and plan better!

2 – PERSISTENT CONDITIONS AND EFFECTS

There are certain conditions and effects that carry on to the character’s next turn, for example, Shock, Feint, All-Out-Attack or Total Defense, etc. In simultaneous turn these effects begin exactly the moment the action which triggers them is resolved.

Example 1: A hero declares an attack against the orc bandit. The orc immediately selects and declares his defense (all defenses are reactions and declared outside of the normal turn order. They are resolved immediately after the attack action). Then, on his turn, the orc declares Total Defense. When the attack is resolved however, the orc does not receive the benefits of his Total Defense maneuver, as its effect begins after the attack and reactive defense are resolved.

Example 2: An adventurer declares a Feint against the orc. The orc then declares Total Defense. There are no rolls this turn (blind feints, yes!), and the orc’s defensive maneuver automatically provides its +2 to defense for the remainder of this round and during the next round until it is orc’s turn to act again. If in the next round an adventurer declares an attack to capitalize on his Feint, the orc’s defenses are still improved and his defense reaction enjoys +2 from Total Defense maneuver.

All lasting effects and conditions should work this way – triggered by the action on one turn, and last persistently until the next action disables or cancels it or the time-based effect expires.

Wait – player declares that his character shall wait for a particular event to happen and then shall take a certain action. If this event doesn’t happen, then declared Wait maneuver is wasted.

Total Defense – when this action is resolved in the second stage of the turn, character’s defenses are improved until it is time to act again.

All-Out-Attack and Committed Attack – these limit or outright disable your defenses until your next action.

Shock – the penalty for physical pain starts when character receives damage and persists into his next action. The character also suffers Staggered condition.

Example: The adventurer is hit with the sword and injured! He has already resolved his action this round, so the penalty shall be applied to the action he is going to declare next turn, provided he manages to overcome his Staggered condition which is also applied.

3 – NEW MECHANICS: STAGGERED CONDITION

This is a new type of affliction suffered when a character receives enough injury to suffer Shock. It is a very important new mechanic, used for balancing purposes. How so? Simultaneous turn method presupposes that actions cannot be reconsidered, so if anyone suffers Shock while his action is about to be resolved, he cannot escape the penalty. Contrary, the character who has already resolved his action before being injured and receiving Shock, has an unfair ability to declare some other action for his next turn and thus “sit out” the effect of Shock for free, which puts combatants on uneven footing and is, therefore, unacceptable. Staggering mechanic was introduced to mitigate this.

Staggering – whenever any character is injured for enough hp to suffer Shock, his next action automatically switches to either Total Defense or Move with half speed. To overcome this effect and proceed with the declared action (or declare some action), character must roll Will minus Shock penalty. Success means he can act (with regular Shock penalty still applicable), failure means he is forced into “defensive stance”, critical success makes the character immune to Staggering until the end of battle, and critical failure forces a Fright Check.

It is important to note, that Staggering is psychological effect, and not physical. It should not be mistaken for knockdown, which is result of physical inability of a creature to withstand punishment. Staggering is a creature’s reaction to extreme pain under life threatening conditions, that is why it rolls Will and not HT. Therefore GM should decide that combatants, who are unable to feel Shock or fear can be immune to this affliction.

Example: A combat robot is programmed to fight and does not feel fear, shock or pain. It is only concerned with its survival when this is tactically sound. Therefore, even when it receives damage, it continues to act immune to Staggering and only suffers purely physical effects of injury.

[Bloodlust]

Part 3 of 3

4 – NEW MECHANIC: SUPPRESSIVE FIRE (OPTIONAL)

This is a new take on mechanic introduced in Tactical shooting, when an NPC has to roll Will -2 to act if he’s under suppressive fire. I discovered firefights to be more realistic when this mechanic is enforced on all combatants who are not immune to fear.

Most GURPS players I encountered practically never use suppressive fire – this maneuver doesn’t have enough tactical significance in Basic Set. However, most realistic firefights involve a lot of suppressive fire!

To simulate this, suppressive fire now forcibly triggers the effect similar to Staggering in its targets. Anyone has to roll Will -2 to force himself into or across the line of fire. On a failure they stay in cover, and their action is wasted. If an attacker opens up suppressive fire on someone, the target must roll Will -2 or dive into cover or behind corner (the attack roll still happens). Someone caught in the open will Move to nearest cover, and if it can’t be reached in one Move, than he must Dodge and Drop (the attack roll again happens). If attacker continues to suppress, new Will rolls must be made by the target every round to force themselves to stand. If the target can’t succeed on Will roll to stand up, they can still act while lying down or crawl towards cover.

This is more realistic behavior that I witnessed during real life firefights. In GURPS mechanics it gives more significance to Suppressive fire maneuver, and changes ranged combat with firearms dramatically. Morale (which is effectively a Will attribute) now plays more significant role during firefights.

Example: Two soldiers spot each other on the battlefield. The first one declares Aim maneuver. The other declares suppressive fire on his turn to try and force the enemy into cover, breaking his aim. During resolution stage first soldier aims (this needs no roll, obviously), and the second opens fire. Now the first soldier has to roll Will -2 or be forced to dive for cover or Dodge and Drop, losing his Aim. The second soldier (who suppresses) will get a chance to attack either way, though at usual cap of 6 + Rapid fire bonus.

Again, as is with Staggering being suppressed is a psychological condition, and GM should rule that those, who do not feel fear or otherwise disregard their own safety, can be immune to the effect of suppressive fire.






This is pretty much it. Only a few more sentences left to add.

Calculate your rolls in the last possible moment. Not only this is more thrilling, but also saves a lot of time as in simultaneous turn method it is quite normal for declared actions to become ineligible and calculating them in advance is a waste of time anyway. Teach your players to act “in character” without trying to use calculator or character sheets. This increases immersion a lot and makes games more interesting.

Write up declared actions and later their resolutions! While this may seem tedious, I discovered that all the time me and players managed to save by changing the combat system immediately gets filled with additional combatants. Now in our games we often get fights that involve several times more actors than before. You can’t possibly remember that much declared actions.

Don’t forget that defenses are reactions and must be declared out of sequence to be resolved immediately after the attack roll. Yes, this does mean going blind, not knowing whether the enemy blow will actually connect or not. You either declare your defense and lose your aim, concentration etc, or you stand tall and hope that enemy shall miss. Remember, the target number for the roll will be calculated later in the execution stage and, therefore, you will have no idea what this number will be and what chance to hit the enemy shall have. If you declared your defense and the attack roll misses, then this defense automatically succeeds. Be sure to declare all defensive options – if you want a +3 from Retreat on your dodge, you must say so when you declare dodge, not when it’s time to roll it.

[sjmdw45]

While the details of my WE-GO method are slightly different than yours, I agree that IGO-UGO can cause problems with player attention span and with player/GM fun, and also can make combat seem unrealistically organized.

The simplest WE-GO implementation for DFRPG/GURPS that I know of is this:

1. GM maintains a queue of declared actions, which must have sufficient detail that the GM can roll dice and resolve them. E.g. "I Move and Attack the closest orcs with Rapid Strikes to the head."

2. To resolve actions, GM picks up the first declaration in the queue, resolves it, and announces the results, and then moves to the next action in the queue.

3. Players can add action declarations to the end of the queue at any time, but if they already have an action in the queue, adding a fresh action declaration invalidates it and it must be discarded.

4. If multiple actions are added to the queue at about the same time (i.e. without knowledge of each other and reasonably close together in realtime, such as when the GM decides the orcs will each attack a separate PC and the PC wizard decides to cast Glue and the swashbuckler decides to Move towards the orcs), they go into the queue in order of Enhanced Time Sense followed by Speed, just like RAW initiative.

This might lead to the wizard canceling Glue in order not to Glue the swashbuckler to the floor, but that means the orcs will finish their action to split up and attack different PCs before the wizard's revised action can complete. Dungeon chaos ensues!

[Bloodlust]

Your method is also interesting, it obviously makes combat faster, though without further elaboration it is hard for me to tell how much it aligns with basic rules. You see, my original goal was to create this article for my country's GURPS community, and it has to be very close to the basic rules with which everybody is familiar. So I kept changes to the core mechanics to the minimum. Players won't have to learn too much new stuff to use this, that's the main point.

I am also planning to have more articles like this in the future to post in my community, to fix several other issues with the GURPS that the public is having.

Right now I am finishing an article about building a very detailed character templates.

And then there is going to be an article elaborating a subject of a task difficulty. Basic Set doesn't detail the subject to much and you won't believe how often I hear stuff like "omg, my peasants are starving cause they can't make their Farming-11 rolls half the time!" or "I pressed my gun against the enemy head and still missed! GURPS is so lame!" or "I have average scores in everything and can't succeed even in most basic task that should be trivial, boo hoo!"
So something needs to be done about this =)

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Bloodlust

Your method is also interesting, it obviously makes combat faster, though without further elaboration it is hard for me to tell how much it aligns with basic rules.

In the extreme case where players always know exactly what they want to do (e.g. "hit the BBEG with my axe until he falls down dead") it would align exactly with Basic rules: everyone takes turns making attacks until the bad guy is dead or all the players are.

In more tactically sophisticated scenarios, it is different than Basic because PCs can't instantly, magically adjust to changing circumstances. You may wind up swinging your sword at the same guy an archer just KO'ed with an arrow to the eye a fraction of a second earlier, because you don't want to abort your turn (since you still want to make the other sword strike at another guy, since you were trying to attack them both with Rapid Strike). Some people like that extra chaos factor because war is chaotic. Other people really hate sometimes "wasting an attack."

In some ways it can be easier to GM since you just resolve actions in order (going down your list on paper or stack of notecards or however you want to keep track of the queue). In other ways it's more demanding because you are insisting that players tell you details up front like who they are attacking and where they're stepping, instead of deciding those things on their turn while everyone else waits for them.

There are pros and cons.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Bloodlust

And then there is going to be an article elaborating a subject of a task difficulty. Basic Set doesn't detail the subject to much and you won't believe how often I hear stuff like "omg, my peasants are starving cause they can't make their Farming-11 rolls half the time!" or "I pressed my gun against the enemy head and still missed! GURPS is so lame!" or "I have average scores in everything and can't succeed even in most basic task that should be trivial, boo hoo!"
So something needs to be done about this =)

Don't forget that RAW already says

• "Normal" adventuring skill use is expected to be under stressful, high-stakes conditions, like combat. There's a +4 TDM for routine skill use. (Also +5, in the same category in the TDM chart.)
• Trivial tasks get at least a +8; +10 also suggests that the skill roll just be waived in most circumstances. (There's an old RPG rule of thumb that says "if both success and failure aren't interesting results, don't roll.") You generally don't roll to drive down a street or land a plane in good conditions.
• Extra time spent gives up to +5. (People rarely have the luxury of spending 30x as long on a given task -- except their hobbies! -- but x2/+1 or x4/+2 isn't hard to commit to if it's really an important roll.)
• Supervision/leadership gives +1 (or +2 if the leader has a crit success). Few people truly work alone with no supervision or direction whatsoever.

If people are rolling against 10s for routine daily chores, they're probably not following the rules as written or intended in the first place. "Professional" (including those peasants farming) is supposed to be 12+; the basic +4 TDM makes it a 16, so the only fails are crit fails. If a GM is making players "roll to hit" for a gun already pressed against the head of a helpless victim, the GM's doing it wrong. (Maybe you want to roll just to see if the gun jams, but there's not a "and still missed" in that. Most GMs I know just treat a coup de grace as "OK, it's dead. What do you do now?")

Originally Posted by Intro to Chapter 10, "Success Rolls", B343

WHEN TO ROLL

To avoid bogging down the game in endless die rolls, the GM should only require a success roll if there is a chance of meaningful failure or gainful success. In particular, the GM should require
success rolls when . . .
• A PC’s health, wealth, friends, reputation, or equipment are at risk. This includes chases, combat (even if the target is stationary and at point-blank range!), espionage, thievery, and similar “adventuring” activities.
• A PC stands to gain allies, information, new abilities, social standing, or wealth.

The GM should not require rolls for . . .
• Utterly trivial tasks, such as crossing the street, driving into town, feeding the dog, finding the corner store, or turning on the computer.
• Daily work at a mundane, nonadventuring job. (To evaluate job performance, make monthly “job rolls”; see Jobs, p. 516.)

[Otaku]

Of course, I only notice this thread when I don't have time to thoroughly read it, but when I might actually have something relevant to add to the discussion. So I beg for some lenience as I just mention and article that may prove relevant:

Very Basic Melee Combat: Really Simple Shortcuts for Really Quick Battles is an article originally from Roleplayer 23, but I read it in GURPS Compendium II* as a sidebar on pages 89, 91, and 92.** Looks like it was officially posted here on the official site, so it is readily accessed by all of us. :) This article might be worth checking out, whether for additional ideas to incorporate in the above rules, or in case there are similarities between the rule sets (in which case, I'd say the article confirms they're a good idea).



*Meaning it was for Third Edition
**Page 90 had some artwork in that space

[RyanW]

There might be a simpler, less intrusive way to streamline the "what do I do this turn" bottleneck.

If you have your action written down before the turn sequence comes to you, you get a +2 to implement it, provided you don't change any significant details or stop to reassess (if there are multiple rolls, maybe make it +1 to all or +2 to one, player's choice). You're maintaining tempo, keeping your focus, etc. (or whatever character-side excuse for an explicitly player-side house rule, if you even feel the need for one).

[Purple Snit]

I have to wonder - at what point do the changes to the system make it an entirely new system? If you redo combat, add Characteristics, streamline skills, overhaul disadvantages, as various threads have discussed lately, at some point this becomes an entirely new game, and isn't GURPS at all.
As a GM, the thought of having to keep track of everyone's intended moves for every turn doesn't appeal - it was always a pain in Car Wars, where all actions were supposed to be declared up front.
If it works for you, that's great, but I don't think it would enhance my games.